


My Funny Valentine

by MattLamourWrites



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-15
Updated: 2019-07-15
Packaged: 2020-06-29 04:44:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,913
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19822798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MattLamourWrites/pseuds/MattLamourWrites
Summary: Ten years after the events of Fallout 4, Nick Valentine has a problem. His memory is failing him, and rapidly. Desperate for help to stop himself from losing his mind forever, he turns to Nat Wright. The former paper girl is among his most trusted friends, and she joins him in a quest to save Nick from losing himself.Marked Teen for some future violence.





	My Funny Valentine

**2297**

Ten years ago, the “Man Out of Time” left Vault 111 and permanently changed the Commonwealth. I was still a kid, but old enough that I remember him clearly. We didn’t talk much, but I saw him come and go through town almost every day. He was always loaded down with supplies from his day’s haul, trophies left behind by raiders and Gunners who got in his way. I was just a papergirl then, although I guess not much has changed.

My big sister, Piper Wright, started Publick Occurrences to try to shed a light on the darkness in the Commonwealth. It got her in a lot of trouble, and then it got the Vault Dweller into trouble, too. It seemed like they liked it that way. I would sell the papers, and Piper would write them when she found the time on the road. Next time they came through town, she’d check in on me and drop off what she’d written, and I’d start selling again.

It was boring, but it kept food on the table, and kept us in Diamond City. They eventually gave up trying to kick us out, especially after Piper and the Vault Dweller became a twosome. He was kind to everyone who ever deserved it, and brutal to anyone else. No one would cross him, and rightly so.

A year after the Brotherhood of Steel fell out of the sky and the Institute went up in flames, my sister and the Man Out of Time disappeared. Things were much better in the Commonwealth, with the Minutemen keeping us as safe as could be, and the Railroad finally working out in the open and protecting synths. Life was as good as it could get, except I had no idea where Piper was.

If there’s anything I learned from being Piper’s shadow for all those years before, it’s that the story worth talking about is the one that nobody wants to tell. The Institute was gone. Raiders in the Commonwealth were next to non-existent. Super Mutants were rare, too, unless you counted Strong. The reality is that they were probably dead somewhere. On the side of some road, decaying, unceremoniously. No matter how safe you make the world, it only takes one feral ghoul to sneak up on you to end it all. It has been about eight years since I saw my sister, and I have never stopped looking.

I finally left the Commonwealth for the first time because my closest friend asked me to. I was just about done writing an article for the Publick, when my paperboy knocked on the front door.

“Come in, Shaun,” I yelled from upstairs, typing away at the same terminal my sister had used years before.

“Uh, Ms. Natalie? Mr. Nick Valentine is here to see you,” he said, nervously. Shaun was almost an adult, but he had a nervous energy that seemed to never end. He was a synth, so I heard, and the Vault Dweller’s adopted son. He was rescued from the Institute when the Railroad destroyed it. Piper wrote a great story about the whole thing.

“Shaun, let him in. Nick is always welcome,” I said, getting out of the chair and making my way down the stairs. Nick was just coming in through the front door, a look of concern on his face.

“Nat, good to see you,” he said, still wearing the same old trench coat and hat. They looked as bad as ever, threadbare and nearly pointless to wear at all.

“You too, Nick. What’s up?” I said, taking the moment to have a smoke break. I took one out of the pack and lit up, offering my friend one as well.

Nick nodded and took a cigarette, lighting it quickly and putting it to what was left of his lips.

“I got a favor to ask of you,” he said in his familiar rasp, “but I was hoping I could buy you a drink first.”

*** 

The Dugout Inn never changed. Vadim was still at the bar, and Yefim was still covering the rooms. The clientele was basically unchanged from what it had been when I was a kid, with the exception of a few people missing. People still died, from time to time, but they were almost always people I didn’t know at all. 

Hawthorne was there, telling stories, and Mayor Travis Miles was chatting up a pretty girl in the corner, someone who looked far more impressed by him than I ever would be. Mr. Deegan was trying his best to get drunk at the end of the bar, despite being a ghoul and always having trouble keeping a buzz going. Cait was at the other end, laughing about something with Vadim. After all these years, she was still off of the chems, though she still threw back a pint from time to time.

I enjoyed a drink, myself. Hell, there wasn’t a lot else to do for fun besides get drunk at the Dugout Inn. The other bar in town was boring and snobby, and everything besides Power Noodles was closed by the time I finished work for the day. So I drank, maybe a little too much.

“Hey hey everybody, little Nat and the detective are here!” Vadim yelled as soon as I was within his sightline. Never mind the fact that I was about his height and a fully grown woman, he still saw me as the little papergirl. I could barely remember being that person, but there was something comforting about this Russian idiot who still saw me that way.

“Hey Vadim, good to see you,” I said, sliding into an empty stool next to Cait, Nick joining me on the other side.

“Vadim,” Nick said with a nod, “two whiskeys.”

“What’re you going to have?” I said with a smile, sticking my tongue out at Nick playfully. I didn’t have a lot to smile about most of the time, but Nick Valentine brought out a better side of me. He was genuinely the best friend I had, and the strongest connection I had to the way things used to be. Sure, things used to be horrible and dangerous, but at least I had Piper.

“Heh, better make it three, Yefim,” Nick said with a forced smile.

“Vadim. I am Vadim. Surely the great robot detective can keep us Russians apart, yes?” Vadim said with a laugh and his thick Russian accent.

“Of course, Vadim, I’m sorry,” Nick said with a sigh, “The old CPU ain’t what it used to be.”

“You and me both, my friend. Don’t worry about it. The moonshine gets all of us eventually, yes?” Vadim said with another chuckle, pouring the whiskies for each of us and moving on to other customers.

“Are you alright, Nick?” I asked, suddenly realizing that nothing about his demeanor was normal.

“I’m really not,” he said, taking a sip of the whiskey. I always wondered whether he could actually taste the whiskey, or the cigarettes, or if they were just habit from his old life. I never asked, but the thought still crosses my mind.

“What’s wrong?” I said, gulping down half of my double-whiskey in one long drink.

“My memory is failing me. Catastrophically. It has been coming over the past couple months, I can’t remember a damn thing,” he said, “Ellie tells me about things that happened a year ago, and I have no recollection of it. Anything before that, it’s evil worse. I’ve got holotype backups on old cases and that kind of thing, but other than that, I have no long term memory anymore.”

“God, really? It’s that bad? Do you remember anything from before? The stuff before the war? Or the Institute?” I asked, finishing my whiskey and gesturing to Vadim to fill it again.

“Not a damn thing. I didn’t even know what the Institute was this morning. But I may have found a solution in one of my old case files,” Nick said, holding up a holotape from his coat pocket, “Ellie found it for me this afternoon.”

“What is it? What’s the case?”

“About 9 years ago, my old partner and I went to a place called Far Harbor, northeast a ways. Apparently, we were looking into a missing person’s case. A young girl, Kasumi Nakano, went there to join a synth commune. She thought she was a synth, and we went to find her and bring her home to her parents. The job went well, and in the end she went home safely, but the tape had some other details, too,” Nick said, our drinks refilled in the meantime.

“I remember this one. The Children of Atom on the old submarine, the synths in Acadia, and Far Harbor itself in this sort of cold war. Acadia is where you met your brother, right?” I said, remembering the details of the article Piper wrote like it was yesterday.

“Brother?” Nick said, saying it like it was the first time he was hearing it, “That wasn’t in the case file.”

“Maybe you were trying to keep in secret, I don’t know. Your brother, DIMA. The only other synth just like you. Your memories were an imprint, he developed his personality through experience. Piper told me about it,” I said.

Nick looked at me as though he was searching for something. I looked back for a moment in confusion before I realized what he was searching for: he had no idea who Piper was.

My heart sank. I remembered Piper and Nick being as close as two friends could be, working together on case after case. The idea that Nick wouldn’t even remember her hadn’t even entered my mind. It was at that moment that I knew this was, really, really serious.

“So what are you thinking, anyway? About your memories? About Far Harbor?” I said, trying to make sense of it.

“Look, I may end up in the scrap heap if I can’t get this fixed. I guess what I’m hoping is that if anyone knows what to do to fix it, it’ll be the people at Acadia. This tape says there was at least one Institute scientist living there. Maybe he knows what to do. Maybe this ‘brother’ of mine has had the same problem. Maybe there’s a fix…”

“Okay, so when do we leave?”

“I didn’t even ask you to come with me, yet,” Nick said, looking at her with the corner of his eye while he stared into his drink.

“You don’t have to. I’m in. But it can’t be just the two of us. We need at least another gun or two. We don’t know what’s out there, that far out,” I said, trying to think.

“Sorry, love, but I’m all booked with the caravans for the season,” Cait said in her Scottish accent, “and sorry for listenin’ in, while I’m at it.”

“It’s alright, Cait. Thanks,” I said.

“I’m in,” a voice came from behind us. We turned to see Hawthorne standing there, “Just give me a day to get my things together and I’ll come. Nicky’s good people, I won’t let you two go alone.”

“I appreciate that,” Nick said with a nod and a smile.

“Alright, so you’ve got yourself a power trio. How are we going to make this a quartet?” Hawthorne said before taking a big swig from his bottle of Gwinnett Stout.

“I know just who to ask,” I said.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for checking out the first chapter. This is my first foray into writing fan fiction, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. Hopefully I'll have the next chapter done soon. Let me know what you think in the comments!


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